A Short History on Racial Profiling - October 30, 2001

It will be interesting to see if the Bush administration uses racial profiling when it decides who to wiretap. See today's NYTimes article "Senate Approves Broadening of Wiretap Powers"

As far as racial profiling is concerned - as the Bin Laden family was being flown away after 9-11, hundreds of Muslims were being called to immigration offices in Los Angeles, having been told they needed to go in for some type of verification of documentation. When they would arrive they were detained by immigration authorities.

The following article was printed by the New York Daily News on October 30, 2001 - about 1,000 Muslims being detained in Los Angeles. It is very difficult to find articles in other major newspapers about this incident.


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INFO SOUGHT ON 1,000 HELD IN PROBE By BOB PORT DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 26
New York Daily News
October 20, 2001

WASHINGTON - Civil rights and Muslim organizations demanded yesterday that the government release the names of nearly 1,000 people detained in the federal terrorism investigation.

Twenty groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the identities of those arrested, charges against them, where they are held and names of their lawyers.

That information should not be kept secret, they said, and by keeping it confidential, the FBI, prosecutors and judges are abusing their power.

The groups also asked to be told where federal courts have issued secret orders declaring such information to be confidential.

"The secrecy orders themselves appear to be secret," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, which spearheaded the effort. "The denial of this basic information violates the public's right to know."

Morton Halperin, chairman of the group, said no one is seeking to know investigative information or details - just who was arrested and why. "It's simply impossible to see how the release of that information could harm national security," he said.

Some detainees have been held for more than a week without their families knowing, or held without their families knowing where they are, said Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union office in Washington.

Nojeim said he wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft this month and asked about arrestees but got no response.

The Justice Department had no comment yesterday. As of Friday, according to department officials, 977 people had been detained, including 172 on immigration offenses.

from Lexis Nexis